H e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e n G i n s b e r g

N a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i v e s E d i t i o n

MARC OLMSTED

McDonald’s Funeral

T’s older brother, Japanese

American-born

- devoted to his mother -

never married.

T once found his brother

close to the television late at night

jacking off to hot starlet

Melanie Griffith’s BODY DOUBLE.

After stomach cancer, the brother

watched the Food Channel

all day.

The 85 year old mother nursed him through chemo,

went out & got him the fast food he craved

when he could eat –

canned enchilada, McDonald’s –

his diet for decades –

all the stuff the probably killed him.

One morning the brother couldn’t rouse

the exhausted mother

and pulled his own corpse

to the huge family car –

bald, no eyebrows, gaunt, shrunken, pale –

cruising into the McDonald’s Drive-Through

like the horror comics Cryptkeeper

for his pancakes.

When he died, there were Buddhist ceremonies, of course –

the mother found herself in McDonald’s

buying a hamburger in his memory

but tears wouldn’t stop

convulsing her tiny frame –

she had to leave that final burger

for his ghost.